Not Responsible For Broken Windshields — Part 1
It’s beginning to look as if my “Cute” little title will prove a little hollow … neither the Red Sox nor the Rockies have been hitting anything out to Lansdowne Street, but for a fan, there’s always tomorrow … or Sunday in this case, when the Series resumes in Denver and both teams get a chance to bomb Blake Street. But I did promise a short series today to highlight some of the many uses and business advantages available through GPS tracking systems over and above putting little dots on the map to show where the trucks are. The series so far:
Today we’ll take a look at two often overlooked features, Onboard Security and Diagnostic Sensors. I’m looking at these two features together because they often function similarly and sometimes even wire to the same terminals of an on-board GPS tracking unit.
Onboard Security can be as simple as a microswitch tied to the GPS which records the opening and closing of the vehicle’s cargo door. It’s easy to see when this can come into play with high value carriers such as armored car firms. Indeed a company I was dealing with assured me there was no need to use something like this on their vehicles because their drivers and guards were absolutely top-notch and always followed procedure. Just for fun, however, they let me put a demo GPS tracking unit on a vehicle and guess what? their crew always followed the company regulations except for a couple times a week when they’d stop a a bakery, the driver would leave the cab, get coffee and doughnuts and the guard would open the vault door (just for a minute, you understand) to let the driver pass in the goodies. You will never know if you don’t measure, and locking the barn door before the horse (or cash) is stolen seems like better business to me. What actions taken by your drivers could you monitor for profit. Would you drivers/cargo be safer with perhaps a hidden “duress” button that5 the driver could push if s/he was in trouble?
Diagnostic Sensors are another great place to gain efficiency/promote profits. What if, in addition to tracking fleet locations the GPS system also tracked vehicle computer “fault codes” generated by the truck’s built-in electronics and told the dispatcher there was a problem with the truck before the driver even knew? As just one well-established company, Networkcar does with their Network Fleet system … even doing California-approved smog testing as the vehicle rolls … better than paying drivers to sit at the inspection station in my view.
Another diagnostic-oriented on-board system I like is made and sold by Geotab. The unit mounts 
just by plugging in to the vehicle’s J1708 data bus and reads the hundreds of signals being sent on the buss every hour. You set custom alerts to get reports for just the fault codes your mechanics are interested in. How many $18,000 engine re-builds a year would you need to avoid to cost-justify a $500 or $600 “live” monitoring system.
If you want to know more about smart things you can do with onboard security and diagnostics, just let me know … no salesman will call .. I don’t sell this stuff I’m just trying to put it on the map.
As always, I welcome comments, constructive criticisms, disagreements, questions or just plain talk. You can leave a comment to this article or email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. I’m usually on Yahoo messenger (davestarr) and will be happy to chat there. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.
Dave -
One other thing worth mentioning, with these diagnostics-based GPS tracking products: Their speed, mileage, fuel consumption, and idling time data is 99+% ACCURATE. Since they monitor the vehicle’s computer rather than rely on GPS interpolated speeds, distances, and ambiguous ignition switch status for idling data, they are MUCH more reliable.
The NetworkCar product, which we use to fuel our GPS Insight product, for instance, gives REAL odometer readings which most other products don’t (or can’t). GPS “jumps” happen with every product I’ve ever seen, but with the GPS Insight product, we strip the jumps out of our mapping, and NetworkCar doesn’t report the erroneous miles and crazy-high speeds most other products do, since they get that data from the engine. GPS “jumps” happen when vehicles get bounced-around GPS signals (e.g. under a bridge, etc.) and rarely happen, but when they do, they put the vehicle in the ocean, etc. At least if/when they happen with a product like these (ours) those jumps don’t erroneously factor into speed and distance, so you can still rely upon your speeding reports for safety and your odometer readings for maintenence. Plus you’ll know how much fuel your vehicle uses/MPG, real idling times (based on vehicle RPM) and most importantly, when your vehicle has a trouble code (e.g. engine light on) and what that means, in real time, via email (with the NetworkCar/GPS Insight solution). Anecdotally, we put these in our own vehicles, of course, and I was driving to our Orange County location with my head of operations and following our lead installer in his Dodge Durango. We got an email that the speed sensor had failed in the Durango, & when we caught up at the office, we told the driver (Shawn) what was wrong with his vehicle. He said that his engine light had gone on during the drive but he had no idea what it was. We knew before he did, automatically. Powerful stuff.
Rob.
Thanks for the real-world experiences, Rob. You’ll love the article I just posted here:
http://satviz.com/gps-crime/gps-versus-speed-radar-misuse-of-both-technologies/
About a police department and a law enforcement-connected offender arguing that GPS tracking is more accurate than police radar and vice versa.
People do need to understand that GPS tracking so=houldn’t be used as aprimary tool for speed enforcement … it’s a manager’s tool … and a very good one … but most systems are not designed with court cases in mind. Of course, police radar is horribly inaccurate at certain times and rpadside speed cameras? OMG, let’s not go there ….